


A Marriage of Connivance

by bocje_ce_ustu



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Bickering, Charles Always Says the Absolute Worst Thing He Could Possibly Say, Don’t copy to another site, Erik Has Feelings, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Needles, Telepathophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-14 04:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19266289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bocje_ce_ustu/pseuds/bocje_ce_ustu
Summary: While advertising the school's activities, Charles and Erik end up visiting a telepathophobic mutant community. Here Erik does the only thing he can to ensure Charles's power block gets entrusted to him: making everyone believe they're married.





	A Marriage of Connivance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JackyJango](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackyJango/gifts).



> This is a slightly polished version of [my Tumblr fill](https://bocje-ce-ustu.tumblr.com/post/171485471497/88-cherik#notes) for the prompt “Don’t panic but I think we might have accidentally gotten married…” on [this list](https://bocje-ce-ustu.tumblr.com/post/169625349357/send-me-a-pairing-and-a-number-and-ill-write-you). Enjoy!

“Names?”

 _You told me we’d been invited_ , Erik thought, piqued.

_It’s just a formality._

“Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr,” Charles said, brandishing his brightest smile like a business card. Inside, he was positively giddy.

_Just like the old days._

_You clearly remember fewer fuck yous than I do._

Charles was undeterred. _You’re clearly forgetting the motel rooms between one fuck you and the other_.

Among all of Erik’s partners, Charles had always been the worst at separating work and play, which made him especially hard to quit.

“Reason to enter ElefteriM?”

“Presenting the educational program of Xavier’s Westchester School for Gifted Youngsters.”

“Are you carrying any weapons?”

Charles looked at him out of the corner of his eye as if waiting for Erik to take an assault rifle out of his tailored suit.

“No” Erik said blandly, the tips of his powers caressing the steel spheres in his pocket. He could  _feel_  Charles rolling his eyes.

_They’re stress-relieving._

One eyebrow climbed discreetly higher on Charles’s pale forehead.

“State your mutation,” the guard droned on.

Erik lifted the pen off the guard’s fingers and drew a lazy circle with it in the air, before returning it to its owner.

“Metallokinesis,” the man concluded with the tiniest frown at Erik’s liberty, scribbling on his writing pad. Erik opened his mouth to correct him, but felt a little pressure in his head suggesting otherwise.

The guard turned to Charles.

 _Hello_ , Charles sent, projecting just loud enough for the two of them to hear.

The guard’s eyes widened. At once he dropped his pen onto the pad and blew some instruction in his mouthpiece.

“Code 16! We have a code 16!”

No sooner had he uttered the words that three other guards had rushed out of the back door of the lodge to surround them.

The spheres rattled in Erik’s pocket. Charles looked at him and shook his head in minimal, measured movements, as he raised his hands in a pacifying gesture. “It’s me,” Charles said to the newcomers, and one of them approached him with tentative steps, wielding a syringe in his hand, while the other two kept their positions. One showed no visible mutation, but he had a wide stance and was conspicuously barefoot; the other had her spike-covered forearms held out towards Erik in a parody of a spooked porcupine. As if that were enough to stop him.

“Don’t touch him.”

The lights flickered. That was all the warning they’d get.

 _Erik, calm down._  Charles’s tone was curt, but he didn’t look tense as he bared the inside of his elbow to the needle.

_Calm down?! The fuck is wrong with them?_

_They’re afraid of me._

_Afraid._ The fancy word for every kind of hate.

_It’s alright. They only need to put me to sleep to figure out what to do with me._

The light above their heads exploded in a cloud of sparks. If it hadn’t been for the impression of Charles’s palm on his sternum, Erik wouldn’t have stopped at that.

 _Diplomatic mission, Erik,_  Charles murmured drowsily through their dwindling connection.  _Don’t kill anyone.  
_

***

  
Consciousness came back slowly and eerily incomplete. The usual buzz was gone from his awareness, which made him pick up almost instantly on the one mind he could feel nearby, a familiar beacon tangled in a bubbly mix of affection and apprehension, though not of the aching kind he was used to. No, it was more like anticipation, which Charles wasn’t entirely sure meant good news either.

He cracked one eye, then the other open on a greyish, discolored ceiling. His temples itched, something round and thick weighting down on them. When he tried to take it off, it stung, like it had tiny prickles keeping it in place. Bother. He should have expected that.

He was lying on a bed, his chair set beside it for easy access, no doubt by the person currently looking at him from an armchair in the corner.

The sweet, bordering on idiotic expression Erik was wearing wasn’t exactly reassuring, but Charles had woken up to worse things.

As soon as he noticed Charles’s eyes on himself, the fingers Erik had been idly tapping on the armrest dropped to his lap and he looked up to meet Charles’s gaze, his daze morphing into mild concern as he asked him how he felt.

There was something different about him. It took Charles a while to realize what exactly.

“Why are you wearing a ring?” Charles asked, feeling a little stupid himself. Then he realized Erik’s gaze had been aimed lower before, somewhere around his middle. He was still in his clothes, and he could see nothing out of the or— “I’m wearing one too.”

Something in the recesses of his brain clicked. “Erik, why are we wearing rings?” Charles dropped his head back onto the pillow with a sigh. “Tell me they don’t match.”

“They match,” Erik deadpanned, unhelpfully. Then his tone almost took on a proud edge. “I’ve made them.”

“Oh god.”

“Alright, don’t panic but I think we might have accidentally gotten married…”

“Accidentally?” Charles raised the incriminating hand to his face. The ring was bent and polished aluminum, it actually looked pretty intentional.

“Ok, listen, it was the only way I could get a hold of this,” Erik explained, handing him a small device with a round controller taking up most of its surface. The knob already pointed to the maximum level. Great. Telepathy suppressor AND isolated chamber. The full package.

Charles huffed. “Or you could just float it out of their pockets while they weren’t looking.”

“Diplomatic mission, Charles,” Erik said solemnly. “We can’t let them throw us out before we do what we came here to do.” Charles had to give it to Erik, he was doing his best to conceal the absolute pride he took in his latest achievement. Not that he wasn’t failing spectacularly at that.

Charles turned the device in his hands, studying it. “Why would they even trust you with this, I wonder… I wouldn’t trust you with it, and I sleep with— ah.” Kinky bastards.

“Exactly. Anyway, hold your world-dominance hungry horses.” Charles rolled his eyes at that. “I’m required to hand over the block as soon as we cross the threshold.”

“I knew it! They couldn’t trust you.”

“But you scared them more. Isn’t that a nice change.”

“That’s a pity though,” Charles said. “You didn’t get to propose.”

Erik looked over at him with a spark of interest. “Is that a request?”

“Maybe. I’d love to have a glimpse at this side of the Master of Magnetism.” He propped himself up on one elbow, looking at Erik expectantly. That would be fun.

Erik averted his gaze, making a show of trying to gather his thoughts. As if they weren’t plastered all over the forefront of his mind already. Subconsciously or not, he was playing with the ring on his finger.

Finally, “Well, first I’d take you to the beach”.

“Haven’t we been there already?”

“That covers the ‘old’ part of the bargain.”

Charles grinned. “I thought you didn’t care for consumerist human Gentile traditions.”

Erik frowned. “I don't know why I keep humoring your frankly questionable passion for cheap pop symbolism.” He graciously ignored Charles's snort and continued, “Anyway, I’d take you to the beach — it would be in the early evening and somewhere quiet, so it would be only the two of us — and then I’d get on my knees—”

“Tell me something new.”

Erik soldiered on with a scowl. “— and I’d say that even though I’ve hurt you in the past—”

“— and you never listen…”

“— and  _you_  never listen,” echoed Erik, eyes glinting with mischief, “I want to build a brighter future with you.” By the end of it he had a little pink in his cheeks, and Charles felt like kissing him.

“You sure seem to have put a lot of thought into this,” he teased Erik instead.

“You know, just in case we needed to fake a marriage.”

“Sure.” He nodded for emphasis.

Erik shook his head, letting out a short, resigned chuckle.

Their eyes met again, and suddenly Charles wanted a great deal of things. He wanted to run his fingers through Erik’s greying hair, to push him on his back on the bed and forget everything else. He wanted a beach, a different one, in the early evening. Just the two of them. No stop at the jewelry needed.

Yet he felt as if he was back in college, about to offer a drink to one of the older girls. As if he was facing a smooth wall of endless possibilities, daunting as it was desirable, and he didn’t know the way up.

Erik cleared his throat, and the wall dissolved. Charles couldn’t help but notice the red creeping down below his collar. “So about what you said earlier… did you really mea—”

A knock on the door startled them. Erik’s mouth twitched at a corner as he hardly refrained from keeping the latch in place.

A face Charles remembered from the lodge appeared on the threshold.

“Sorry for the wait. The Council will receive you over dinner. Please come with me.”

  
***

Erik’s presence in the room was short of redundant. Charles’s secondary mutation had to be charm, because even with the suppressor around his temples he managed to have the audience wrapped around his finger. It was only a matter of taste, really, that he’d stuck with Erik for so long, when he could mesmerize whomever he wanted with that smile full of mischief, that light in his eyes, that sensuous voice.

The people milling around the buffet turned to Erik only with questions of how Charles’s telepathy impacted on their daily life at the mansion, or if they had any rules there to prevent breaches in one’s privacy, and so on and so forth, with levels of concern bordering on monomania that left even Erik, who had his own reservations on the topic, seething on behalf of his companion. The only remarkable exception was a little elderly lady who asked him about his first meeting with Charles.

Erik instantly decided Harriett didn’t deserve the most gruesome details of it. “It was 1962, in Miami. I was…” He smiled at the memory. “He saved me from drowning.”

“Oh, that's so sweet!” she cooed, her third hand reaching out to drop a few tiny sandwiches onto Erik’s plate. Thankfully they seemed filled with some sort of tuna salad.

“You know,” he added then as an afterthought, “he found me thanks to his gift.”

She nodded, mulling over that new piece of information. “And you’ve been together ever since?”

Erik cringed. He thought about Cuba, about more than nine years of captivity in the Pentagon, then about Magda and Nina, and the decade of utter happiness one slip had all but crushed, and then about Apocalypse and all of the years of endless fights over politics and rights that had followed.

“It’s complicated,” he said.

But then he thought of a team of young misfits fooling around with their powers, of evenings of chess and making love in the library, of the quiet, tentative touch of a mind to his own in the years apart, of the nights and days spent poured over blueprints for the new mansion or bickering over piles of tests, and the smile came back to his lips.

“But he never gave up on me.”

His eyes met Charles’s at the other end of the room, and Charles returned his smile warmly, oblivious to their conversation.

“Well, you found each other eventually.” The old lady hid a knowing grin behind her sandwich. “Seeing two people so in love after all these years is good for the soul.”

“Unless, you know,” chimed in a young man with a patterned, scaly complexion and the pointed face of a lizard, “he did some trick to make you fall in love with him.”

Erik tasted bile and all his reservations about full disclosure went out of the window. “Yeah, and tell me, that would have been before or after I crippled him and left him stranded on a beach?”

Harriett gasped softly, her third hand covering her mouth while the other two trembled around the dinner plate. If she knew what else he had done to Charles only on that day in 1962, she’d spit in his face with good reason.

Lizard-Face recovered from his surprise soon enough to add fuel to the fire. He darted a look towards Charles, deep into some conversation that had the people around him burst into giggles, and clicked his tongue. “Guess you’re both mindless fools, then.”

“We must be, coming all the way down here to help people like you.” Erik set his plate on the side table with a loud clunk and stepped away. Then he stopped, looking back over his shoulder. “Except you, Harriett. You’re lovely. Thank you for the chat.” She nodded, though with a deep frown of concern still on her face, and Erik walked away, crossing the room in long, steady strides to the balcony. If he stayed inside one minute longer, heads would roll.

Was it so hard to believe telepaths weren’t just out there to get you? If Erik tried to remember one invasive instance of Charles’s telepathy that hadn’t been warranted by other lives being in danger, none came to mind, and he was his nemesis.

Besides, telepathy was just a gift like any other, not something you could or should suppress at leisure. Erik knew that, and that was why he trusted Charles with the use he made of it.

Charles’s words from earlier hit him again.  _I wouldn’t trust you with it, and I sleep with you._

Clearly he hadn’t meant it like that. He and Charles had their divergences, that much was true, but surely Charles wouldn’t believe…

But those had been his very words, and Erik remembered Charles’s wry quirk of lips as he had discovered Erik had been made the keeper of his powers.

A familiar shape coming up from behind distracted him from his thoughts.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding.”

Charles wheeled out onto the balcony, pulling his chair to a stop beside Erik.

“I think I’ve traumatized a senior citizen.” That was not what he’d meant to say, but at least he had words for it.

“I didn’t expect any less from you.”

“She was the only one more interested in gossip than in the danger your power represents.” Erik scoffed. “How can they be such a bunch of bigots?”

“Coming from the defending champion, it must be bad.”

Erik gritted his teeth. “At least you didn’t have to listen to all of that.”

“Hey.” Charles tugged on his sleeve. When Erik turned to him, Charles raised his hands to curl them around Erik’s arms, pulling him down for a kiss. Erik savored the firm grip warming his skin through the clothes, his hands finding Charles’s jaw and shoulder to ground himself while his lips parted with a sigh.

The kiss lacked the familiar echo to Erik’s own lightheadedness, but that didn’t help lift the fog from his mind. The passion that Charles put into taking him apart with so simple an act clashed violently with the vitriol he distilled in his words.

Erik pulled away, panting. “Why did you do that?”

Charles’s eyes were fixed on his with a peculiar intensity. “Because I wanted to.” He reached for Erik’s hand, fingers intertwining. The rings clanked together. “Because I can.”

He was never going to let Erik live that down.

“I’m glad you’re here with me for this,” Charles added, warm as you please.

Erik turned away. His eyes stung, his lips were still warm from the kiss, and his mind kept cycling through Charles’s words,  _I wouldn’t trust you with it, and I sleep with you; I wouldn’t trust you with it, and I sleep with you; I wouldn’t trust you with it, and I sleep with you; I wouldn’t trust you with it, and_ —

“You found the good champagne.” His voice barely trembled. Small mercies.

“You know I’m a sad drunk,” Charles chuckled.

“More like a sleazy drunk.”

He turned in time to see Charles shrugging in defeat. “Can’t argue with that.” The intensity from before returned to his eyes. He recognized it now, anticipated the plea that was bound to follow it. “Come back inside.”

Charles needed him. That was why he’d followed him out, that was why… Had he timed the kiss to be seen by the others? The balcony glass doors left little privacy after all. Charles needed him to show that a telepath could be trusted, could be loved. Charles didn’t trust him back.

“Show me to the wine.” He stomped back inside, not even turning around to check if Charles followed. He didn’t need to.

The rest of the evening passed in a blur. When after the buffet Charles had pulled up the presentation and leaflets had changed hands, Erik had retreated to a wall with a full glass of champagne in hand, emerging from the shadows only to add a few relevant details to Charles’s talk.

Soon, but not as soon as Erik would have liked, they were packing up and one of the councilmen was approaching them, a pair of new faces in uniform in tow.

“I’m delighted you could come, Professor.” The man shook Charles’s hand fervently, then ventured an uncertain nod in Erik’s direction. “And I’m truly mortified about the dreadful reception. Dana and Leon,” the councilman pointed at the two at his back, “will make sure everything runs smoothly on your way out. Though of course we would be honored if you were our guests for the night”.

As if being held captives even longer than expected was something to look forward to. Erik fumed. “Thank you, that won’t be n–”

“Gladly,” cut in Charles, voice dripping honey. “It’s a long way back. The guest room is the same, I presume.”

The councilman looked over his shoulder to one of the guards, who nodded.

“Well then. Dana will escort you with the key. Have a good night.”

Charles replied in kind, moving to flank the guard on their way down the corridor. He knew Erik would follow.

  
***

  
Charles gave it two hours – all through his bathroom routine, Erik’s shower, and a half-distracted make out session as they climbed into bed – before he finally gave up and turned into Erik’s embrace to peer into his much too vigil eyes.

“You’re giving me a headache. Just say it.”

Erik bit his lip. He was dying to let all of his grievances flow in the space between them, but he knew that meant risking anything else pouring out too, and Charles had to suppress a smile when he caught Erik weighting up the satisfaction of letting it all out with the time he’d waste trying to get Charles to spoon again.

The smile had to have come through though, because Erik suddenly looked away, his mind taking a sharp turn into bitterness.

“Having fun, aren’t you?”

This time, Charles didn’t even try to hide his smile as he raised a hand to Erik’s cheek for comfort, but Erik kept his gaze stubbornly averted.

“Do you trust me at all?” There. It was out.

“I trust you with my life.”

A surge of impotence and injustice. Erik couldn’t look away anymore.

“But not with your powers.”

“Darling—”

“Don’t you ‘darling’ me. You only use terms of endearment when you’re thinking I’m hopelessly daft.”

“Daft about someone, definitely.”

“Less and less by the second, rest assured,” he grumbled. He felt the reins of the discourse irremediably slipping from his hands. Charles kept on sidetracking him and refusing to acknowledge the truth. Oh, the hopeless drama queen.

“Erik, love,” Charles bit his tongue. “We’ve been on opposite sides of a barricade for too long for you to ask me that question.”

“I would trust you with mine.” Erik’s pout was both too endearing and unnerving, and Charles couldn’t resist swiping away the wrinkles it had carved in his cheek.

“Because you know what I’d do with them.”

Erik’s eyes lighted up. “Make the world a better place.”

Charles sighed. “Nothing. I’d do nothing with them.”

The pout returned with a vengeance.

“I don’t believe that.”

“Let’s hope I never get the chance then.” Charles returned him a mirthless smile and turned around.

In the silence that followed, which granted could have been quieter if Erik’s mind hadn’t keened with unresolved tension, Erik’s arms rearranged around Charles’s middle to stroke lightly at his side, the way he used to do whenever he still felt wronged but wanted the argument over more than he wanted to win. Then he perched his jaw on Charles’s shoulder and nuzzled at his neck, which was as near an admission of defeat as it got, with Erik.

“Are you mad at me? I was supposed to be mad at you.”

Charles snorted, but craned his neck for a kiss anyway. “I could never be mad at you. It’s our honeymoon.”

“Oh, stop it.”

“I like it, by the way.” Charles showed his hand and wiggled his fingers, letting the metal band catch the dim light coming in from the window. “I might want to keep it.”

Erik looked up to Charles’s ring with unfocused eyes. Charles wondered how it felt to sense them both, his ring and Erik’s together, in the space of a single breath. If they sang to the same tune, calling to each other as their minds did.

Erik’s hold on him tightened slightly, a wave of warmth coursing through them both.

“Your students will have questions.”

  
***

  
“And that’s the story of how I got engaged.” Charles looked positively radiant, and it was all Hank could do not to suggest another round of tests to check for drugs in his system.

Jean was silently chewing on the inside of her cheek, Scott was agape.

“Neither of you actually said the words, right?” Hank asked, tentatively.

“You should know better than me that words are of relative importance whenever Erik is involved.”

Many a villain monologue came to mind.

“Anyway, the intention was there, and given our venerable age, we saw no need to be formal about it.”

“We are happy for you. Both. I guess.” Ororo smiled, not quarter convinced.

“Does this mean we won’t have any more showdowns with the Brotherhood, at least?” Logan’s nose had been a perpetual wrinkle since long before entering the room. Hank knew perfectly why, and wished he didn’t. He could smell Erik Lehnsherr as if he were there (which wasn’t even a remote possibility, given the abundance of spacious closets in the room).

“Probably not.”

Scott and Logan groaned in unison.

  
***

  
“You didn’t.”

“I sure did. You faked our marriage, what’s a fake engagement to that?”

He looked at Charles in utter disbelief.

“This is your family! Those people we’ll never see again in our lives!”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” argued Charles. “Four kids from ElefteriM will be here starting next semester for primary education. Besides, I Iike the idea of not having to make something up every time you quote kidnap unquote me.”

The elevator opened to the ground floor with a ping, feeding them to the hordes of students of all ages swarming the hallways.

“Hi, Professor!”

“Hi, Cindy!”

Erik pressed his hat down on his forehead, avoiding the radiant gaze of the seven year old as they passed her by. “Right, so what do you tell them now?”

“Hello, Mr Lehnsherr!” One of their newest students, a brat with a perennial ice drop sticking out of his nose like a stalactite, ventured a wave. “Taking the Professor out on a date?”

Erik rolled his eyes. “My reputation is forever ruined.”

“And how rad is that,” Charles said, not sorry in the least.

People even smiled at him in the hallways now. Gah.

 


End file.
